


Down Time For The Constantly Moving

by PredictableDisaster



Series: Royal Straight Flush [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25310443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PredictableDisaster/pseuds/PredictableDisaster
Summary: There's a million things to do, a milliom things to say, and a million things to think about.Sometimes you gotta take a break from them and just take a seat.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Series: Royal Straight Flush [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722910
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	1. ROSE: be forced to take a break

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly this'll just be a collection of whatevers i think of for this au that aren't really big or anything

There has been a constant click clacking of keys for the past week and a half.

Rose is knee deep into her new novel and hasn't really stopped writing even when she's spent the last four days complaining that nothing she writes is working.

She's usually hunched over her desktop in her work room in the basement, looking very much like a cryptid illuminated by her screen. When someone drags her out, she picks up her laptop or tablet and just bundles up and blocks everyone out with her bulky headset.

It's not really too much of a problem. She still eats when someone drops food in front of her, falls asleep the moment her head hits her favourite pillow, and takes showers when someone tosses clothes in her general direction. "Much better than the LaLockdown of '16 so honestly I don't think we need to bother her," Dave said three days in.

But the amount of furious key smashing and vitriolic mumbling was starting to get on Karkat's nerves. And making him worry about her well being.

So, on the eve of Day 12, he barges in her work room holding up his external hard drive and determinatiom in his stance.

Rose pauses mid-sip of her coffee and blinks at Karkat.

"... Good evening?"

"Upstairs," He orders, waving the hard drive. "Now."

"Uhhhh," her eyes drift to her document and scans it, already half dismissing Karkat. "I have to fix this scene. I think I know how to make it work and I'm on a great streak-"

"No. Fuck that. You said that five times already today and I doubt sixth time is the fucking charm." He waves the hard drive even more. "You need a fucking break before we have to clean up your brain when it melts out of your fucking nostrils."

"Thank you for your concern on the well being and placement of my brain, but I _really_ do think I have it now."

Karkat snorts and rolls his eyes. "You don't. Trust me; you don't. You haven't taken a break outisde of sleeping and we can all hear you recording your scenes on your phone when you can't use your other shit.

"You haven't given yourself a break and you're driving your shitty writer car across the country on half a cup of creativity juice and you keep replenishing it with your fucking spit which gives you like two feet of movement and usually you forget that you had your car in reverse so it's not even helpful."

Rose blinks and stares at him for a beat. "Odd analogy for someone who doesn't know how to drive."

"Fuck off Lalonde- _Maryam_ -Lalonde. My point still fucking stands. You haven't even talked about this with your editor so you don't have a fucking deadline to meet."

Rose clicks her jaw shut and idly plays with her sweatpants. "That... Is true, I suppose."

"Yeah it fucking is." He aggressively thrusts the hard drive in front of her face and waves it around. "Now. Break fucking time."

Rose blinks and notices the miniature playing card taped to the corner of it. She huffs quietly and makes a dramatic show of getting off her chair. "You have convinced me, Sir Vantas. You have me for two hours."

Karkat lightly bonks her and scowls. "Rest of the night or you're not getting garbage plate tomorrow."

Rose scrunches up her face at that. "But we've already agreed on it..." she mumbles. She glances at Karkat's raised eyebrow and sighs. "Fine."

The two make their way up and into the living room. Dave is already sprawled on one part of L-shapped couch, his customary bowl of evening cereal on his chest. Kanaya was focused on her DS before noticing her and making space on the other side of the couch for her.

She drops down next to her wife and before she could go curl up on her side, Kanaya drapes herself over her like the world's most fashionable blanket. She mushes her face on her chest and sighs happily.

"I'm glad you missed me, love." Rose laughs as she runs her fingers through her hair.

"While Karkat and Dave are very good at listening to my end-of-the-day rants, I do miss just flopping face first into my wife's boobs and just mumbling."

Rose snorts and presses a kiss to her wife's head.

The lights turn off suddenly and Rose turns to see Karkat push Dave's legs enough for him to sit on the couch. "I'm the boss of tonight's movies and we're watching _50 First Dates_ and none of you are allowed to complain."

"Can I take jabs at it?" Dave asks.

"How else are we going to appreciate it?"

"Fuck yeah."

As the first few minutes played Rose felt herself relax into the couch and pull Kanaya closer. She fell asleep to her brother's dead pan jokes, her in-law's criticisms, and her wife's quiet laughs.


	2. JOHN: notice tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose is always wearing sleeves long enough to hide her hands or gloves. This is the first time John sees her without it and he uses it as a conversation starter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. in the au this is like about a month and a bit after the two join the company. they're still all fresh and rose is still that mysterious woman and all that and ofc john is doin' his 100% best to make buds w her

"Oh!"

Rose looks up from wiping her hands on the towel by the sink. John points at her right hand, eyes focused on the tattoo reading _veritas_ in all caps with the 'i' replaced with a purple wand. She follows his gaze and mumbles a quite noise of understanding.

"I didn't know you had a tattoo!" John comes a bit closer to have a better look at it.

"That would be because I make some effort to hide it, Mr. Egbert," Rose replies with a mild smirk.

He turns sheepish at this, rubbing his neck. "Well... The company is cool with stuff like that y'know? Like Vris has a gigantic tattoo of a spider on her back and she still comes in sometimes in stuff that show it off and no one tells her off on it."

"You do know that using Vriska as an example does nothing to convince me of this, right?"

"Ah, good point. Still." John leans on the table they have in the break room, gesturing to Rose's hand with his lips. "I don't think it's against the rules and even if it were I don't think anyone here would rat you out."

Rose smirks at him. "It seems that I've found myself in quite the rebellious bunch."

He smiles wide at her and gives her two enthusiastic thumbs up. "What's it mean? It's Latin right?"

She hums absently, examining her tattoo. John makes a small note on the nostalgic lilt in her lips. "It means 'Truth'. It's actually one half of a pair. Someone extremely important to me has a matching one."

"Oh? What do they have?"

" _Āequitās_ ; justice. It's a reference to a movie we really liked."

"A movie?" A spark lights in John's eyes at that. "What's its title? I might know it." He puffs up slightly and smiles smugly. "I gotta say I'm a bit of a movie buff and know a whole lot."

Rose huffs a small laugh. "You would get along very well with my wife's best friend." She pulls out her glove from her back pocket and plays with it. "It's from this movie about brothers fighting for justice. They realize that the world is unfair and those with money, power, and influence regularly escape the consequences of destroying multiple lives. After this epiphany, they decide to take matters into their own hands and bring these men into justice through the light of god.

"They go around their city spreading their belief and protecting the people from further ruin. Holding onto each other as brothers and never forgetting that they are merely tools of their god; always thanking him for the power he gives them and using his words as guidance." Rose tilts her head slightly downward and brings her tattooed hand to her face.

"And shepherds we shall be. For thee, my Lord, for thee.

"Power hath descended forth from thy hand that our feet may swiftly carry out thy command.

"So we shall flow a river forth to thee and teeming with souls shall it ever be.

" _E nomini patri, et Fili e spiritu sancti._ "

She closes her eyes and presses a light kiss against it. A beat passes before she straightens and looks back at John. "Neither of us are religious but we still have that quote memorized. We got the tattoo as something of a totem to our relationship. We saw our bond to be just as strong as the brothers and thought it would be a good reference to a movie we thoroughly enjoyed as teens."

John hums in interest. He makes another note to ask more about this mysterious person and find out the title of the movie. It doesn't sound very interesting to him- not enough action- but he does like bonding with people through it so maybe it would be a good thing for all of them to watch when they can.

"That's really cool, Rose! I hope I'll meet someone who'll get a matching tattoo with me from a movie."

"That might be a little hard since most of what you like is Nic Cage." Rose quips as she puts her glove back on.

"Hey, he's a got some good lines too." John replies with a pout.

"I'm sure he is." Rose makes a shooing gesture at him. "Now I do believe that you have something to discuss with Terezi. I still have a bit of my break and I'd like to spend it here scrolling through my phone."

John smiles wide. "Alright, alright. I'll see you again later Rose!" He shoots her a goofy salute and glides out of the room.

She shakes her head at him and pulls up a chair to sit in. Dave, who has been standing by the fridge the whole time sipping quietly at his apple juice, decides it's time to pipe up.

"Did you seriously pitch _Boondock Saints_ to John as a religious movie where they go around preaching?"

She throws him a sly smile. "It seemed like a good time to see if I could do it."

Dave chuckles. "And you fooled the poor man." He moves to the door and lightly punches her shoulder as he passes. "I should give that a shot. Explain action movies like they're definitely not action movies. Might be fun."

"Good luck with that dear David, I hope you fool someone. And oh," Rose pauses to pull her phone out of her pocket, "I hear that Vriska thinks I'm a spy here to seduce artists into my home company and my current target is you."

Her brother snorts at that. "Of course Vriska would think that. I can't wait for their theories to get wilder. Money's on Jade getting the closest, woman's sharper than she looks."

Rose hums. "I can't disagree on that." Dave shoots her a smile before leaving the room. She smiles and focuses on her phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a drawing for this look at it over [here](https://chezforshire.tumblr.com/post/623982203940012032/%C4%81-e-q-u-i-t-%C4%81-s-v-e-r-i-t-a-s-dont-just-like)


	3. ROSE AND DAVE: drift away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drifting, drifting, drifting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had some angst in my head and since the comic i was making for it wasn't working as well as i liked, i decided to just make this while i'm barely awake so sorry about everything about it ig

You remember the first time she found a girl she liked.

You pushed her, told her to go for it, and like the great wingman and brother that you are, watched from your perch above as it crashed and burned in half a month.

She may deny it with her entire being, but Rose Lalonde was a sappy romantic at heart so she kept falling for every girl that so much as smiled kindly at her. And you, ever supportive, kept telling her to pursue it. It never ends well- she's more than a little full of herself and the girls she keep falling for were all so boring- but you know that she gets some sort of happiness from it so you never voice your complaints.

No matter who the current girlfriend was, however she would always be your partner in crime. You could always count on her no matter what and the same could be said for you. Your siblinghood took priority over everyone because no one could break down the amount of epics that she spouts on a daily basis to get to her point like you did. No one could read the way her body tenses around talks about alcohol or motherhood. No one could hear the way she pauses in between words, trying to figure out if she was reading it right or was her brain making things harder again.

No one could understand her like you did. No one else could sway her like you did. No one else did she sincerely call family.

No one else was Dave motherfucking Strider.

Or at least

that's how it was.

Because suddenly, after several doomed-from-the-start relationships, one of them lasts more than three months. One of them still has her smiling at her phone at every text. One of them still has her trying so hard she looks stupid. One of them still has her caring.

It didn't scare you. Of course not. Nothing scared a Strider. It did, however, infuriate you to no end. Kanaya Maryam did not need to demand Rose's time because she somehow found a way to maker her _want_ her presence at all times. It was like watching a stray cat endear itself to a child and succeed to well that the child brings it everywhere.

School, park, stores, and even at your home she was able to weasel her way into our lives. So much so that Rose was starting to instinctively go to her instead of you.

It

was

infuriating.

You didn't know what to do. You knew what you wanted to do. You couldn't do anything.

So you just watched them. Watched Rose light up and laugh whenever her girlfriend came into the room, make space on whatever place she was taking up and offer it all up to her. Watched your sister accept and put up with new experiences, waiting patiently as she holds onto her girlfriend. Watched her change down to the very fiber of her person, becoming someone so far from the person he knew.

You watched as slowly

surely

she drifted.

And there was nothing you could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is, like, set when they were angsty as hell teenagers so dw they fix up their bullshit and dave doesn't feel like he's being replaced anymore


	4. TEREZI: unlock backstory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi isn't at the right friendship level to unlock Dave's Tragic Backstory yet but she's high enough to see a preview.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup. i'm back. and that's because my graphic tablet refuses to be nice to me. so have something i've been thinking of for a while

The moment she cracks open her tupperware, Dave lets out an amazed whistle.

"That looks damn delicious, T-judge." She feels him move around and settle somewhere beside her.

"Thanks, Cool Kid." She smirks at his general direction and picks up her spoon. "My mom's been into a lotta cooking stuff and I am her lucky guinea pig."

"Oh." Dave says. "You still live with your mom?"

Terezi squares up her shoulders and gives him a stern face. "Not everyone can, has to, or wants to move out of their parents' house. That's some Western and very privileged expectations and is more often than not hurtful to a lot of people."

"Ah," Dave sputters. "Nah, no, yo, that ain't what I meant. And I'm sorry that's how it got through, but it was more..."

He pauses and she could tell he was struggling to find his words. For a person who spoke so much and wrote so frequently, he sure had a lot of trouble getting to the right way to express himself. They used to think that meant him and Rose would be the best pair, but his sister could barely say what she wanted to either. They were just a mess as siblings and she still thinks it's a bit of a miracle they make a living out of their words.

"It's more that I forget people actually get a long well with their guardians, is what I wanted to say."

"Ah, yeah that makes sense." She waves her hand. "I mean, it's not really all sugar and rainbows with my mom. Shit was rough before, but we've just been learning to be better to each other, you know? And one of her ways to do that is to make me sick as hell food." She taps her tupperware and smirks at Dave.

He breathes out a laugh at that. "Yeah and she's winnin' me over too. Never gonna be me and Rose though, so I'll just live vicariously through you, 'rez."

"Oh wow, is that some Dave 'Cool Kid' Strider backstory I'm hearing right now?"

"Maybe." She hears him tap the table a bit. "You're not far enough in the game to unlock my Tragic Backstory, but-" she hears him pause ever so slightly at that, breathing in a quick breath of courage- "you can get some hints at it."

"Well then," she pulls her food close to her, "I'm all ears."

There was a significant pause before he started. "My... guardian wasn't a good man. Okay, he was an abusive as fuck jackass and kind of did a bad number on my whole person." He sighs out a mix of frustration and sadness. "A lotta complicated shit happened and basically I got away from him and landed my ass with Rose and her mom.

"She wasn't a terrible woman. Honestly, from where I was standing at that time she seemed like a fucking saint." She hears him slide his palms around the table, one of his many thinking habits. "But that wasn't really right. She was nice, and I still do think she genuinely loved Rose -and I guess me too- but. But sometimes loving someone really isn't enough and you have to do so much more. And she never..." He sighs again, this time sounding infinitely sadder. "Never really got around to it."

Tapping replaces his voice and they sit there for a while. "Will my dialogue for this part affect yours?" She mumbles. "Because I do wanna say that that shit sucks."

He laughs lightly at that and stops tapping. "The dialogue won't change, but Dave will remember that." She smiles at him and she can tell that he was smiling back.

"But yeah, shit did suck for a while and me and Rose were shit people during then too. It was a lot because of our situation, but that ain't really ever an excuse to being an asshole.

"Sometime during then we met our spouses. Rose immediately got with Kan, and I got with Karkles years after. Neither of them had a nice relationship with their family either, so we didn't really meet their folks too much and had one of those magical 'my partner's family accepts me' trope those romance movies keep having."

He snorts at that. "We were shit people that had some shit relationships with their family so obviously we wanted to get away as soon as we fucking could."

"So you ran away?" She asks after swallowing a bit of her lunch.

"Nah, we thought that was a bitch move so Rose got married immediately and I decided to be a STEM major to be as far from the shit my guardian raised me to be."

She chokes at that and downs the cup of water Dave kindly pushed towards her. " _STEM_? You? You were confused just yesterday why blood typing was a thing."

He laughs at that. "Yeah, yeah. There's way too much stories to talk about our college life so let's just TLDR it to: we wanted to be so against shit that we made some shit ass choices. I mean, Rose marrying Kanaya wasn't a bad thing it was just done for the wrong reasons.

"We were suck people and things obviously were suck too because of that. But then we decided 'fuck this shit' and fixed ourselves."

"Ah, words to live by. And of course, that made everything perfect immediately."

"Of course. Immediately meaning we sorted our shit out after months and months of fights and cold shoulders and angry texts." He huffs out a laugh. "We're still mending a million and one of the shit we said and did to each other. But man. Thinking back on those times just makes me want to go back there and push younger me down a fucking cliff.

"One of the things Rose and I just did was to just confront our guardians. Or rather, confront her mom. She was nice, yeah, but there was a lot of things that made it terrible being around her.

"She took it well enough but..." He sighs. "Things were complicated, so we just decided to keep our distance and talk to her whenever we wanted or had to. As for my own guardian... Well, that's its own off shoot game and all I can really say is that I'm free from him and legally have a gigantic cut of his cash."

"At least you got something out of that shit dick." She smiles at him.

"Silver linings." He pauses and she hears him take a sip of his drink."Kan and Karkles did their own stuff to reconcile with their family. We see them a little more than Rose's mom, but yeah.

"Shit's still complicated with them and honestly we don't really know if we want things to be better. For now we're just doing what keeps us sane and not want to murder all our blood relations every other day."

She reaches for his shoulder and pats him. "That's self care bitch." She smiles at him all teeth and he huffs out an appreciative laugh. "I'm glad you guys got to deal with your family stuff the way you guys wanted to. I get not really wanting it to get better and just letting shit be."

"Yeah. Things could change, or it won't but from what I learned about giving a shit about yourself: it's all about compromise and you shouldn't go sacrificing yourself. I ain't no Jesus and a cult following is not something I want in life."

"That's true, but you should've thought a bit more about that before going into the music industry and growing your own little loyal following."

"Ah." She hears him slump onto the table and sigh. "I mean, as long as they don't start praying to me and making effigies it's fine. I already have enough of that from Rosalind."

She cackles at him and gives his back a few solid smacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a mess at some point and you know whatever no looking back people

**Author's Note:**

> If u want u could suggest dumb prompts too ill see if it's fun to do


End file.
